TY - JOUR
AU - Isen,Adam
AU - Rossin-Slater,Maya
AU - Walker,W. Reed
TI - Every Breath You Take - Every Dollar You'll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 19858
PY - 2014
Y2 - January 2014
DO - 10.3386/w19858
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19858
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19858.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Adam Isen
Office of Tax Analysis
U.S. Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20220
E-Mail: adam.isen@gmail.com
Maya Rossin-Slater
Department of Health Research and Policy
Stanford University School of Medicine
150 Governor's Lane
Stanford, CA 94305
E-Mail: mrossin@stanford.edu
Reed Walker
Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
2220 Piedmont Ave
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/965-3298
E-Mail: rwalker@haas.berkeley.edu
M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2014-06-01
AB - This paper examines the long-term impacts of early childhood exposure to air pollution on adult outcomes using U.S. administrative data. We exploit changes in air pollution driven by the 1970 Clean Air Act to analyze the difference in outcomes between cohorts born in counties before and after large improvements in air pollution relative to those same cohorts born in counties that had no improvements. We find a significant relationship between pollution exposure in the year of birth and later life outcomes. A higher pollution level in the year of birth is associated with lower labor force participation and lower earnings at age 30.
ER -